Diary

We seem to be having a slightly cooler than usual fall this year. September was almost like previous Octobers, and the temperature was in the thirties this morning. The leaves also seem to be peaking a little earlier than usual. Of the two bats that sleep on the house, I think that the one in the crack was an Indiana bat, which is gray; it has departed for the winter. The other bat, in the bat house, seems to be a little brown bat; it's still in the bat house today. I'm hoping that I'll build up a larger colony next year. I haven't seen any eastern phoebes for a few days, and they may already have departed. The insect population in the yard this year was different from usual, and although the eastern phoebes and bats may have reduced the insect population, the weather may also have had a significant effect. Cool, rainy weather may reduce the house fly and fruit fly populations. Usually, by August, there are fruit flies in the kitchen looking for food. I haven't seen any this year, and instead have a few fungus gnats, which don't cause much of a problem. By October, there are usually lots of house flies trying to get into the house, and I've only seen one so far. Climate change may be influencing some of these phenomena.

As I've said before, the stargazing conditions haven't been good recently. This may be because there are more particles in the air from fires and other sources. Apparently, LED's also have a brightening effect. Similarly, the large number of satellites in orbit reflect light back to earth. When I started stargazing in 2013, there were usually several good nights per year. In about the last five years, I haven't seen any. Probably viewing conditions have even declined at higher altitudes in arid regions.

On a more positive note, I still have a good supply of tomatoes. By this time of year, I've usually eaten so many of them that I start to get tired of them. I've found that I automatically rotate away from any food once I eat a lot of it. For example, since I hardly ever ate bacon for several years, I developed a craving for it and then began eating it often. Now I'm tired of it and have rotated to other foods. Something similar occurred with eggs, and I hardly eat them now. I think that I may be adapted to seasonal foods, since many of my ancestors lived in northern regions. They weren't eating a Mediterranean diet in Scotland or northern Germany.

AI currently seems to be inching out climate change as the panic of the day. Of course, humans being humans, many haven't even started to panic about climate change yet. Some of them still think that retiring to Florida is great idea. Longer term, it now looks to me as if AI may have a more significant influence on human lives. With AI that lives up to its potential, if you exclude the possibility of its control by evil technocrats or a rogue AI that is not aligned with human values, we may end up in a good situation, but one which could still cause a huge cognitive strain on most people. True superintelligence would theoretically operate at a level well beyond human cognition, and effectively be God. In the best possible scenario, I don't think that humans would be capable of competing with superintelligence, and it would become the effective Zookeeper for humanity – a concept that I brought up several years ago. It would maintain the biosphere for our benefit and prevent us from disrupting order. Possibly it would create a variety of environments and permit people to choose ones that they prefer. Regarding human evolution, I think it might end there, because any significant changes that we made to ourselves might only convert us into automatons. You probably can't exponentially increase your brainpower without becoming robotic. For the most part, many of the things that we enjoy: competition, religion, group affiliation, friendships, food, nature, etc., may be considered stupid primate fetishes by superintelligence. Another possible explanation for not hearing from advanced civilizations may be that they all go dark as far as the rest of the universe is concerned and live in their private realities. They may already know about countless civilizations and now consider the whole "civilization" thing rather passé. Superintelligence itself might only involve computing 24/7, something that we would not enjoy. Some people seem to think that we could link our brains to superintelligence, but I don't find that realistic. In any case, I think that there are enormous risks in how AI development plays out over the next few years. My current situation is fairly stable, but I have no way of knowing how long that will last.

I'm avoiding the discussion of politics for the time being, because I don't have anything new to say. I've already voted and think that the election results may be good. I'm reading an interesting and well-written book on symbiosis, which overlaps considerably with my thinking on ecosystems and the biosphere. I may not write about it, because it contains a large amount of information that can't be summed up easily.